Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! The Streaming Era makes for some strange bedfellows at times, and none may be stranger than seeing Netflix and HBO come together for the sports equivalent of a major-market team trading away their star player for little more than cap space in a shameless salary-dump deal. That’s where Warner Bros. Discovery finds itself these days, with CEO David Zaslav (the highest-paid Hollywood executive over the last 5 years and now the face of wage inequality amid the ongoing writers’ strike, mind you) essentially strip-mining the once-storied studio and selling it off for parts, all to save a buck wherever possible.
If this feels like the worst-case scenario for all those who cut the cord in the hopes of avoiding such headache-inducing quagmires typical on cable TV, well, that’s because it’s pretty much exactly that. Now, instead of paying one catch-all price under a single umbrella to “consume content” as you see fit, subscribers have to shell out money for multiple streaming services that no longer offer nearly as much exclusivity as they once did. This deal, you could say, is getting worse all the time.
In fact, in a separate Deadline report, the outlet reiterates the fact that Disney itself isn’t shying away from similar licensing agreements. Although Disney CEO Bob Iger maintains that this will only apply to those outside of their crown jewels of Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar, we’ve clearly crossed the Rubicon and have entered uncharted streaming territory. This increasing trend only highlights what we already knew — that the unstable streaming space is always subject to the whims of their billionaire rights-holders, with viewers left high and dry. As we’ve reiterated over and over again on multiple occasions, invest in physical media, folks!